


You Know Me

by Merrinpippy



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, I intended for this to be much longer but it Did Not want to work with me, M/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-12 01:37:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9049999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merrinpippy/pseuds/Merrinpippy
Summary: Months after Tom sets a challenge for other Hogwarts students to find his blog, the 'Chamber of Secrets', Harry finally stumbles upon it. But, of course, Tom's put a password on it.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bleedingsmirk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bleedingsmirk/gifts).



> Written for the Tomarry Secret Santa Christmas Exchange. Merry Christmas!

“Ron.”

“Not now, Harry, I’m-”

“Ron.”

“Give it a minute-”

_ “Ron.” _

“Honestly Harry, stop hitting me-! Fine, what is it?”

“I found his blog.”

“Whose…  _ his  _ blog?”

“I found the Chamber of Secrets.” 

“Well-? What’s it like?”

A dark grey screen stared back at Harry. The URL read ‘you-know-who’. There were drawn seven serpents fanned out inside a large circle, and in the centre of the screen was a box.

‘Password:’

Ron snorted. “Figures. That’s why he was so confident that no-one would win his challenge- because even if we found his blog we’d have no chance of figuring out his password! Well, except you, Harry. You might be able to.” 

“What makes you think-”

“Don’t be stupid, Harry, you’ve spent more time with Tom Riddle than anyone else. If anyone would know, you would.”

Harry frowned. While it was true that he spent more time with his crush (and most of the students in Hogwarts University’s crushes, let’s be honest) than anyone else, that wasn’t exactly difficult. Few others were really within Tom’s circle. 

“But I’m not sure if I even  _ know  _ him that well…”

But Ron wasn’t listening. He was grinning. “We could make a game out of it. You and me, we can try the password until you win or we give up. I’ll go first.” 

Ron pulled Harry’s laptop towards him so he could type, ‘dontkinkshamemysnakefetish’. Shockingly, that was not the password. 

“Your turn.” 

Harry took the laptop, biting his lip. “I… I really don’t know.” Ron gave him a stop-being-a-killjoy look, so he typed in ‘tiramisu’. That was not the password either. “It’s his favourite desert,” he explained to a questioning Ron. 

It was Ron’s turn now, and he typed in ‘tomxslughorn5ever’ before passing the laptop back to Harry. 

Ron’s attempt reminded Harry of something Tom had said about his childhood, so his next try was ‘knightsofwalpurgis’, which was wrong. 

‘Booksrmyonlyfriends’, Ron typed. 

‘Paradiselost’, Harry typed, remembering Tom’s favourite books. 

This continued. Neither of them got the password right, and Ron fell asleep a little past midnight. Harry, however, could not stop trying to figure out this password.

He felt a little traitorous as he did, though. Tom had set the challenge to his peers with the stakes being £150 and a kiss from Tom to whoever won, but Harry knew that even if he cracked the password and even if he told Tom he wouldn’t ask for either of those things. For one, he didn’t need it, as his parents had left him a sizeable fortune when they’d been murdered in the Morsmordre Killings. And secondly, he couldn’t take advantage of Tom like that. 

Even if, were their positions reversed, Harry was sure Tom would easily take advantage of him. 

… Back to password guessing.

* * *

 

Tom and Harry had met on the first week Harry came to Hogwarts Uni. Fred and George had dragged Harry, Ron, and Hermione to a start-of-term party. Harry had gotten smashed and woke up when everyone except him and Tom had gone. Because the curfew on dormitories meant Harry wouldn’t be able to get in, Tom offered him a spare room for the night. 

Of course, Harry learned later that these circumstances had been engineered by Tom in order to find out more about the so-called ‘boy who lived’- Harry had accidentally come across a stash of news articles in Tom’s house that betrayed his obsession with the serial killer ‘Lord Voldemort’.

Lord Voldemort, when he was still alive, was insane. He believed that the souls of his victims prolonged his life. He killed because he was afraid of death, and none of his victims ever had a scratch on them in death, only a calling card. He had at least seven victims by the time he died, and when he did it was by his own hand; a murder suicide. His final victims had been Lily and James Potter.

When he got to Harry, he realised he couldn’t kill a helpless baby and killed himself instead. When police found his body next to Harry’s crib and his mother’s corpse, they managed to find out where he lived. Turns out he’d written all this in a diary. Harry had been in the local newspapers ever since- they called him the Boy Who Lived, and then after he got his inheritance and donated some of it to the families of the other victims, local newspapers called him the ‘Master of Death’ for ‘overcoming his trauma and making something good out of it’.”

It was for this reason that Harry had to go live with the Dursleys for seventeen long years. It was for this reason that Harry had taken self defense classes for years out of some strange paranoia, and it was for this reason that his own tumblr URL was ‘master-ofdeath’, blog title “But I Am The Chosen One” (a facetious answer he’d given a particularly annoying reporter, once). Harry had created the blog when he was feeling particularly sorry for himself, and could not bring himself to change the words. 

After Harry confronted Tom about the clippings, Tom spoke of his obsession with the murders- 

_ “You know that kid from Scream? The psycho obsessed nerd?” _

_ “No, though i think i know where this is going...” _

_ “I’m kind of like them, except infinitely more popular, attractive, intelligent, powerful, smooth-” _

_ “Arrogant, too.” _

_ “I’m just telling it like it is.” _

-and Harry, angry at being lied to, stormed out of Tom’s house, where by that point he had been spending most of his time. 

They didn’t see each other for weeks afterwards as it was Christmas break, and Harry spent it with the Dursleys as he had nowhere else to go. He wasn’t quite sure what his situation with Tom was (would Tom abandon him now the gig was up, or had he grown to like Harry after all?) and this was almost as agonising as holidays with the Dursleys.

On the first week back, Tom had shown up at Gryffindor Tower with treacle tart and a wrapped gift. The gift turned out to be Carry On by Rainbow Rowell, and their friendship turned out to be still intact.

With it came The Conversation, on a rainy January afternoon when they’d both given up completing homework for the day. It was then that Tom admitted to Harry his greatest fear: death. It was this that drew him to the case of Lord Voldemort. His fear of death and his strange fascination with it was echoed in the memories, the news articles, and the documented diary of the dead serial killer.

Tom admitted that meeting Harry brought realism to his obsession that tempered it and allowed Tom to take an interest in Harry beyond being the survivor of the Morsmordre Killings. But it didn’t stop his interest in Voldemort. In fact, Tom claimed he even kind of understood Voldemort’s motives.

…

_ Oh. _

* * *

 

Harry blinked himself awake from where he’d been falling asleep over his laptop and Ron. 

_ Could it be-? _

He’d accidentally held down a few letters on the keyboard inputting into the text box so he refreshed the page. His fingers hovered over the keyboard as the page loaded again. Maybe he was wrong… but he hadn’t tried it yet, and he could be right… 

He typed. 

‘I am Lord Voldemort’.

For a second, nothing happened, and he brought a hand up to close the laptop over. But then a little animated snake slithered in a circle outside the fan of snakes- had Tom coded that?- and the blog was revealed. 

The first thing Harry did was click the follow button. The next thing he did was scroll.

A popular text post, reblogged. A few aesthetic posts, reblogged. A personal post complaining about Dean Dumbledore. 

Harry couldn’t help the grin that formed on his face. It was just so… endearing. 

Tom’s bio caught Harry’s eye. It read: ‘There is only power, and those too weak to seek it.’

Harry laughed at how  _ Tom  _ it was. Finally, he closed his laptop and climbed under the covers. The decision he had to make followed him into his sleep. Would he tell Tom or not?

* * *

 

“You found me,” was Tom’s greeting the next day as they met in the parking lot. 

“Hey T- what?”

“I saw it this morning, I’ve been following you for months.” Tom grinned. “Now I can finally ask: Chosen One?” 

Harry spluttered. “Says you, mister still-has-a-password-on-their-blog-even-though-it’s-2016!”

Tom shrugged and got into his car, gesturing for Harry to do the same. “So you win. I can give you the £150 when we get home-”

“I don’t need your money, Tom-” 

“And the kiss?” 

Harry remained silent. Tom leaned across the seat, getting into Harry’s space. 

“Don’t tell me it never occurred to you,” Tom said, no longer smiling nor frowning. 

Harry swallowed. Tom’s eyes tracked the movement. “Just don’t feel like you have to do anything you don’t want,” he said, though the idea that Tom didn’t want him was suffocating. 

But Tom actually smirked. “Oh, Harry,” he said, bringing a hand to rest on Harry’s shoulder. “You know me. Do I  _ ever  _ do anything that I don’t want to?”

Harry shook his head ever so slightly, and Tom’s smirk turned into a grin. His hand lifted from Harry’s shoulder to brush his cheek.

“Well,” said Harry, now very red in the face. “What are you waiting for?” 

So Tom kissed him. 


End file.
